A Woman of a Certain Age...

So today was my 28th birthday.

All my life birthdays have been a big deal.  When we were little my mom would go all out.  You would wake up on your birthday and find the dining room decorated with streamers and balloons and a preliminary present waiting for you at the kitchen table.  Because mom wanted to make sure that we were always excited for our sibling's birthday, she would make sure that whoever's birthday it wasn't also had a small gift at their place setting (this remains to this day one of my mother's most brilliant parenting ideas).  She made us these intricate, amazing cakes that were works of art.  One year she constructed a whole clock tower for me, complete with columns.  I could not tell you a single birthday present I ever received but I still remember those cakes.  Of course we have no pictures.  We were the anti-hipsters before anti-hipsters were a thing...

I'm not even joking when I say that my first birthday at college was a bit of a blow.  Nothing quite made the point that I'd left home like waking up to a sad empty dorm room with no streamers in sight.  To be fair, I'm having a vague memory of a possible party thrown for me later that evening by the girls on my floor.  Maybe combined with other September birthdays?  Idk.  But still, that "first thing in the morning surprise that wasn't actually a surprise" hadn't been there and I'll be honest: I still wake up on the morning of my birthday with a teeny tiny hope that somehow there will be balloons and streamers, and every year that there isn't I am a very small, reasonable adult level of sad about it.

The early college years all were rather underwhelming like that.  It wasn't till I came back to school after my study abroad that birthdays began to regain their former glory.  It's amazing what happens when you start having friends...

When you have friends birthdays become a big deal again, even in the absence of breakfast streamers and balloons.

Fun fact: my first ever blues dance happened to be on my birthday.  I had no idea what a "birthday jam" was and I was terrified; when they announced it I kept quiet and thus missed out on one of the best parts of being a dancer.  Had to wait an entire year for my chance to roll back around.  Tragic.

I was the happy recipient of one not-so-surprise party, and another party that was such a surprise that I didn't even show up till I was called and frantically begged to come to Slab "because".  Both experiences were delightful.

I think it was at 25 that I started planning my own birthday party.  That year I asked everyone to bring me something wrapped.  I didn't care what it was, I just wanted to unwrap things.

that is me about to unwrap a sled and my own butcher knife

enjoying a birthday dance which I have never been so foolish as
to pass up ever again after that first poor decision

The next year I asked for flowers.  Fresh, paper, plastic...I would accept anything but those nasty craft store fabric ones.  I got some really silly ones and some really lovely ones and it was absolutely perfect.

Last year Anneke volunteered to throw my party.  She did such a good job!  All my friends stopped by and even though I hadn't asked for anything at all that year, several of them brought gifts (some less "serious" than others).  After the party we went to Red Robin.  Again, amazing.

But last year also felt a bit like an ending, at least in retrospect.  Between 27 and 28 the last of my closest dance friends moved away.  Other friends graduated and moved, or got married or made babies, or got adult-type jobs.  At 25 I had literally a crowd of people I loved and who loved me and bringing them all together was simply delightful.  I must confess that at 28 the crowd has, with all reasonableness, dwindled.  The currents of life have swept a great number of that crowd down different paths to different places.

So this year I didn't throw a party. It just didn't feel right, as idiotic as that sounds.

Instead I dressed up for work, makeup included. I clocked out early. Kara and I ordered pizza and watched some Gilmore Girls and then went to institute.  I ordered a slice of cake from The Chocolate, ate the cake and left the frosting, and questioned who I even am anymore.

And now here I sit at 12:30 am feeling apparently incurably contemplative and wondering if this is what people mean when they talk about "feeling old".  I've never dreaded old age.  My personality is, in fact, far better suited to an old woman than to a young adult.  No one tells grandmothers that they're wasting their lives because they prefer hot chocolate and a good book to an afternoon's hike.  But "28" keeps running around in my head knocking into the bookshelves and disturbing the cats.  "28" tells me I don't want a party this year because it will just remind me of how few friends I have left and how many I haven't made to replenish the pool.  "28" says that I should have, if not a solid plan for my life, at least a definite direction.  "28" says I should stop talking about being an adult and just go ahead and be one.  "28" says that old age might be something I'll enjoy when it gets here, but that the middle bit that I thought was annoyingly long is perhaps not nearly as long as I thought.

When you're little you experience finite eternity, measured in endless summer days.  I suppose "getting old" is the realization that school will come eventually, and each day, no matter how glorious, is NOT endless, but rather one day less before the end.  And 28 is the year that I am realizing that summer cannot last forever.  The day I thought would never come.

The day when I worry "I'm getting old"